


Strictly professional

by mia_ametista



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, by people I mean Josh, pre- and post-game scenes, some people survive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-17
Updated: 2015-09-17
Packaged: 2018-04-21 06:45:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4819172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mia_ametista/pseuds/mia_ametista
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She doesn't even know how she feels about him half of the time. But with him as a partner, everything feels a little less impossible, a little less horrifying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strictly professional

**Author's Note:**

> Until Dawn is making me do things, such as uploading fanfic in English. I apologize for mistakes and bad language, I'm not a native speaker, please everyone feel free to correct me!  
> This got way shippy-er than I originally planned. I'd still say it's pretty much open to reader's interpretation - how romantic or platonic it feels is completely up to you!

_Living in ruins of the palace within my dreams  
And you know we're on each other's team  
\- Lorde_

It is September 5th, 2009 – strangely, looking back, she will remember this of all dates – when she first meets him. First looks into his brown eyes, first hears his voice, slightly hoarse since it's just beginning to break, but the tone cocky as ever (as she will be learning in the years to come).  
"So I guess I scored a strike and my lab partner is the next head cheerleader?"  
She turns to him, eyes narrowing as he throws his bag on the table and himself into the chair next to her. "Wow. The short blonde girl must be the cheerleader. Way to stereotype."  
He grins smugly, holding out his hands in front of him, palms facing her. "Girl. It's high school. It's L.A. Most people are just going with the flow. Stereotypes are pretty accurate, like, ninety-five percent of the time."  
She frowns. "Yeah? Bad for you as soon as you meet the other five percent." She can't decide yet what to think of him. Well – he's clearly not instantly won her over, although he might've expected just that. He sure looks like a stereotype himself: Stereotypical jock. Popular guy. Probably already has four or five of the female freshmen crushing on him, and probably a few male ones as well.  
He shrughs. "Yeah, well, whatever, not-cheerleader girl… you into chemistry?"  
"Kinda."  
"I guess that'll do… I mean, if we discover some chemistry between the two of us, I can show you…" He stops, noticing her disgusted face, then laughs. "Jeez. Okay. Sorry. Actual chemistry."

As she begins to learn, actual chemistry is something he's not that bad at. She soon finds herself in a surprisingly mature, concentrated discussion over the instructions in their chemistry book.  
"No wait, I think you're right." He flips a few pages back and taps on the diagram. "Nice thinking. We do it your way, then."  
"'Kay, let's do it. I'm adding in the acid?"  
"Yeah, hang on, do you have steady hands? I'm gonna check the colour and tell you as soon as it changes…"  
When the class ends they have pretty successfully finished the task, and there's a very satisfied smile upon his lips. "Not-cheerleader girl, you and I make quite the team," he states, and she can't help but laugh and return his fistbump.  
"It's Samantha, actually."  
"Nice name. I'm Michael. So, you know, about that other chemistry thing…"  
"Oh, Michael, don't push it." Sam narrows her eyes once again. He grins. "Fine. Partners, then. Strictly professional."  
She rolls her eyes and slightly slaps him across the shoulder.

~~~

Beth and Jessica are arguing for so long that in the end they draw straws to determine the pairs. Of course, the shortest, most delicate girl has to be paired up with the square-shouldered jock. Of course, Emily doesn't like it, neither does Hannah, and Josh looks slightly annoyed as well, but deal's deal.  
"Don't you dare grab her ass, Michael!!" Em yells from below.  
Sam shoots him a quick amused look. "Yeah. Don't you dare grab my ass, Michael."  
"Shut up, tiny. Not much there anyways. I'll be sure to grab somewhere else when you fall."  
"Excuse me? _When_ I fall? You better hope I'm gonna grab _your_ sorry ass when you fall!"  
"Aw, come on. You're not gonna let me fall. You love me way too much for that."  
"Oh my God…"

Mike's a show-off and his ego is way too big. But he's also Sam's partner, and he knows she's the better climber, and this is not the first time they work together. Although it is the first time they're on a climbing parcours together – it was Josh's idea. Team building exercises.  
Mike is good at keeping an overview, and Sam is good at noticing things. He puts his feet where she tells him to and keeps her updated about the parcours. They're by far the fastest team to finish. When they're sitting next to each other, sharing a water bottle, waiting for the others to arrive, he gives her a little nudge. "Nicely done, climber girl!"  
She raises an eyebrow. "Climber girl? What happened to not-cheerleader girl?"  
"Well, you're not a cheerleader, I got that by now."  
"After we’ve known each other for three years. Good job. Quick thinker."  
"Yeah, I’m the smart one, remember?" He winks, she laughs. He’s a show-off and a jerk sometimes, but he’s got humour and self-irony, and they do make quite the team.

~~~

"Hey, come on, guys!" Hannah grabs Sam's and Emily's arms and beams at them excitedly. "Let's have a picture taken!"  
Emily shakes off Hannah's hand, though she smiles. "Okay, slow down, Speedy Gonzalez! Hey, handsome," she knocks her elbow into Mike's side, "picture time!"  
Sam laughs and lets Hannah drag her along to the photographer. Hannah is probably the one who has been enjoying herself most tonight; she's much more bubbly and excited than usual. (The photograph will turn out really sweet; it will hang on Sam's dorm room wall for quite a while. After that one weekend she will take it down, because she can't bear looking at it any more.)  
When she turns back towards the dance floor after the picture she feels a warm hand on her shoulder. "So, I was wondering," Mike grins smugly, "if you'd do me the honor and give me the pleasure of the next dance."  
She raises an eyebrow. "Oh really? What does your girlfriend say to that?"  
A slight shadow flies across Mike's face and his grin slips for a second. "My girlfriend doesn't say anything, because it's my decision who I do or don't ask for a dance." He looks at Sam for a moment, then sighs softly, his smile brightening again. "Come on. It's Senior Prom. I should be allowed to ask my old lab partner for a dance before she graduates and leaves for Harvard, never to be seen or heard of again."  
Sam can’t help but grin. "I'm not going to Harvard," she says, although of course Mike already knows that.  
"Oh, right!" He smites his forehead. "That would be me then."  
She rolls her eyes at him. "Poser!"  
"Joykill!" Mike laughs. "No, but come on, seriously. It's just a dance. I'm just asking for one dance with my lab partner. No other implications. Strictly professional."  
He looks very pleased with himself when Sam actually laughs out loud over the reference. "Oh, fine! Strictly professional dancing," she agrees. "And just fyi – I'm so not afraid to kick you in the shin if you get unprofessional!"

He doesn't get unprofessional and she's enjoying herself way more than she's ever going to tell him.  
"Your lead is pretty good," she compliments him, which brings back his smug grin.  
"Thanks. You’re following pretty good as well, though."  
She squeezes his hand a little bit when she suddenly notices that she is going to miss him… although it's not like they're not going to see each other any more. They've all agreed to keep in contact; Josh, Hannah, and Beth have already invited them over for skiing during winter break… But it's one thing to see each other every day in class and work together regularly, and it's another thing to go to different colleges, miles apart, having to actively schedule meetings to see each other at all.  
"You know," she says softly, "we do make quite the team."  
For once he doesn't give a silly answer, just smiles and rubs his thumb over the back of her hand before the song finishes and Emily takes over for her.

~~~

It feels weird, talking to Mike over Skype. Then again, pretty much everything feels weird lately, let alone interaction with her friends.  
It's mostly smalltalk, how's it going, how's college. Emily and Mike broke up, to which Sam doesn't know what to respond. She wonders who ended it, but she doesn't ask. It feels tense and slightly uneasy, which it never felt before. Talking to Mike, however big-headed he might be, usually comes easy and natural. Today his jokes feel forced and she often stumps, looking for an answer and not finding one.

At some point a kind of awkward silence arises, which Sam breaks by clearing her throat. "So, I guess we're not talking about the elephant in the room, then."  
His grin fades at once. "What's there to talk," he asks, and something about his voice annoys her.  
"I don't know, everything? How we majorly fucked up? How we probably got two good friends killed?!" When he doesn't respond, she sighs. "I mean, I keep thinking back, Mike. I keep thinking about Hannah, and what if that prank had never happened, like…"  
"You think I don't?" he interrupts her bluntly. "You think I… dunno, just moved on and decided it doesn’t matter?"  
"That's pretty much what it looks like to me, yeah."  
"Well, you're wrong then!" His voice has risen, and even with the less-than-perfect Skype connection and the slightly pixulated laptop screen she can clearly see the hurt in his face. She swallows the sharp response on her tongue.  
Mike takes a deep breath and runs his fingers through his hair. "I did care for Hannah," he says, sounding calmer and quieter again. "I know it didn't exactly look like that… but if I'd thought for one second that she'd run out into the woods after that stupid prank…"  
"You wouldn't have done it, then?"  
He looks at her. "I don't know," he says after a moment of silence. "I mean… she did overreact. But that doesn't make what we did any better. And I really don't feel guilt-free in this."  
Probably for the first time after Hannah's and Beth's disappearance she looks him directly in the eyes (as directly as possible through a Skype line). Her anger is gone. Now she just feels sad again… and weirdly guilty for snapping at Mike. She should've known him better than that.

"I miss you," she says abruptly.  
He blinks, seemingly surprised, and narrows his eyes as if he is trying to find out whether she's serious. "You should come over next weekend," he suggests. "I don't know, just to hang out. Watch some really silly cartoons. I'm making lasagna. Vegetarian."  
Sam actually can't help but smile. "Yeah. I think I might do that."

~~~

They should've known it would end in fighting. Apparently, when you invite Mike and at least two female friends, it is destined to end in fighting.

When Mike is about to leave for the cabin with Jessica, he catches Sam's gaze. She rolls her eyes at him, he responds with a slight shrug.  
From upstairs she can see through the windows at the door. She watches Mike and Jess step outside, then Josh; the three of them talk shortly before Josh comes back in and the other two leave.  
A weird little shiver runs down Sam's back and for some reason she feels uneasy. For some reason, she doesn't like the thought of Mike and Jess leaving for the cabin alone at night.

She sighs, pushing the thought away. It's probably for the best, to prevent another murder happening this year – either Emily strangling Jess, or Jessica scratching Em's eyes out.  
It's not like the cabin is far away, and Mike knows what he's doing… mostly.

~~~

When she's slowly coming around, she realizes she's sitting on an office chair, hands and feet tied together. Then she realizes someone is calling her name.  
"Sam! Sam, wake up!"  
She turns around and blinks. There’s a grid at the bottom of the wall, and behind it a familiar face. "Mike! Is that you?"  
"Shhh," he shushes her quickly and she presses her lips together. "Get over here!"  
It’s hard to move the chair across the floor while being tied to it, and she still feels a little dizzy after being passed out. But she doesn't hesitate to follow Mike's instruction. She feels something sharp and cold against her wrists. Just a moment later her hands are free, and Mike hands her a machete to free her feet. She doesn't ask where the hell he got a machete from.  
Crouching down to the grid she can finally look at him properly – she's never been so relieved to see his face, now dirty, bruised, and bloodstained, but his brown eyes as bright as ever.

Then she notices the bloody cloth around his left hand. "Oh my God, your fingers! Mike!!"  
He looks at his hand, as if he's actually just remembered that he is lacking two fingers. "Yeah. And I'm the lucky one."  
"Jesus, what happened?!" Sam tries hard not to stare at his hand. She feels slightly sick from the thought of how Mike could have lost two fingers, but more than that she feels worried for him.  
Apparently, he's had similar experiences as her tonight. "There's some fucking maniac up here. He's… he's trying to kill us all!"  
Sam takes a deep breath. The pictures from the video are coming back and the nauseous feeling gets stronger. "Listen – this guy you're talking about… he attacked me. He showed me these videos, too, and one of them…" She pauses to collect herself. "… it showed Josh being killed… just… ripped apart by this huge fucking sawblade…" It sounds ridiculous now that she's saying it out loud. But it needs but a look into Mike's eyes to see his pained expression and to know he believes her without hesitation.

It would be easy to lose themselves in pain and fear now, just surrender to panic and despair and apparent helplessness.  
But that's the thing about having Mike as a partner. Or Sam, for that instance. Giving up isn't really an option.  
"There's a door here," Mike tells her after a moment of silence, and his calm, concentrated voice pulls her back into here and now. "It won't open. Can you unlock it from your side?" And she's so very thankful that he's back to concentrating on what they actually _can_ do.  
Hardly two minutes later she pulls open the door and stands right in front of Mike. They look at each other for a heartbeat before his face breaks into a smile. "Hey."  
The urge to throw her arms around his neck is overwhelming. Then she just smiles back. "Jeez, you look like hell."  
He stares at her, then actually manages a tiny chuckle. "Nice to see you, too."

And suddenly, whatever small chance they might have, with having their partner back everything feels a little less impossible and horrifying.

~~~

When they're standing in the lodge, surrounded by Wendigos, desperately trying to think of the impossible – a way out – it is Sam he turns to, automatically, intuitively, because who else could it be? With the tiniest head tilt he catches her eye when she looks back at him as if it was the most natural thing in this moment. She instinctively follows his gaze and immediately understands. Doesn't take her slight nod for him to know.  
Slowly, carefully, she backs away from the fighting Wendigos, hyper conscious about every step, while Mike makes his painfully slow way over to the lightbulb. Get out, his eyes signal to Chris, Ashley, and Emily, get out of here quick; he carefully lifts his arm; his fingers wrap around the lightbulb already.  
Then Sam's foot meets a creaking floor board and her heart skips a beat.

Wendigo eyes upon her, or rather the exact spot where she's standing, trying not to move a muscle. Already knowing that she can't keep still for much longer in the unnatural pose she's in, heart racing – how did they not already hear the pounding, it feels so loud to her…  
The sharp sound of splintering glass tears the silence apart and abruptly shifts the Wendigos' attention away from her. Sam's eyes widen in shock as she catches Mike's gaze.  
"Run," he breathes, pressing his back against the wall, and he knows it's over, he knows there's no more escape, at least not for him. "Do it, Sam!"  
And she can't move, completely frozen by the realization, but as the Wendigos slowly close in on him, his voice reaches her, this time more urge behind his words: "Run, partner!"

She runs.  
Her hand stretches out to the light switch.  
Everything turns very bright and very hot, and then cold and dark when she lands in the snow, ears ringing from the explosion.

~~~

Everything feels numb. Like she isn't even there. Like she's somewhere above, watching while someone else in her body is down there when dawn breaks over Blackwood Mountain.  
When the helicopter arrives over the burning remains of the Washington lodge.  
When they take her in together with Chris, Ashley, and Emily; Ashley has her arms wrapped around Chris' neck the whole time, and he is clutching her tightly, as if he's afraid she could disappear into thin air.  
When Matt and Jess are picked up halfway down the mountain; Jessica is half frozen and Matt is limping, but both are alive.  
When they send a search party into the mines because Matt swears there's someone still alive down there and won't calm down before they give in and agree to check it out.  
When the rescue team arrives three hours later with a half-dead Josh – barely conscious, disoriented, but alive. Still breathing.  
When they keep them at the police office for what seems like years (in reality it's just a few hours, but if Sam has learned anything that night it is that a few hours can sometimes feel like a lifetime).

When a police team goes back to the lodge, after the fire has burned down – and Sam will see it on TV later, and a million times over in her dreams, what they pull out of the ashes and identify as the corpse of a young man.

~~~

Later, Sam can't remember when the funeral was. (She went there with Jessica, but they had to leave when Jess broke down and started screaming.)  
Later, she goes back to college, but the classes feel shallow, and the dorm room empty. (She took down most of the photographs; she can't stand looking at them. It's like after Hannah's and Beth's disappearance, only so much worse.)  
Later, she meets up with Chris and Ashley, but their meetings get fewer and fewer. (Between coffee shops and pizza deliveries and Netflix something important feels like it's missing. It doesn't help that she walks out on Chris when he suggests to go see a horror movie.)

It takes three weeks until she first visits Josh in the hospital. It takes three months until she feels ready to meet up with him again. She knows he isn't responsible, and she knows it is unfair. He is sick. She should have patience and sympathy. Then again, sometimes she just needs a scapegoat. To distract her from the fact that she blames herself.  
Her nightmares are dominated by hollow screeches and slender creatures, orange-red infernos and black, burned corpses.

It takes half a year and Ashley finally losing her patience and yelling at her until she agrees to see a psychiatrist.

~~~

There are some old photographs in the shoe box under her bed. She finds them when she's about to move out of college and in with her girlfriend.  
Her younger self's face is smiling at her from her old prom photo. Emily looks more relaxed than she's seen her in years.  
Two of four people in the picture are dead now.  
Sam's eyes rest on Hannah, on her slightly insecure smile, the butterfly tattoo on her right arm. Then her gaze flickers over to Mike. His disgustingly smug expression actually makes her smile, and she can almost hear his voice in her head. _Just one dance with my lab partner. Strictly professional._

"You ready to go, honey?" Liz sticks her head through the door, pulling Sam out of her thoughts.  
"Uhm… yeah. Yeah!"  
Liz peeks curiously at the box as Sam walks up to her. "What's in there?"  
Sam looks into her girlfriend's eyes. Liz must've felt that something is off, because she reaches out for her and wraps an arm around her waist. They've always made a good team, from the moment they met.

Sam sighs. Then smiles. And suddenly feels like talking, for the first time in almost three years.  
"Just some old pictures… I'll tell you in the car."


End file.
